“What the fuck?” Eleven-year-old me snarled, crossing my skinny, white arms over the Ramones shirt that I’d hitchhiked to Seattle to buy. “You’re like my parents!”

“May.” Danny’s mother, Deborah, said softly. She’d always call me May. “You have to go.”

I’d only just turned eleven a month before, in February, 1978. And they’d decided to call Social Services, saying that I’d run away from foster care and had been living on their couch for over a year. Which was, technically, the truth. I guess they didn’t want a little would-be punk sleeping on their couch anymore.

“Well, fuck you, then,” I said to Deborah, almost matter-of-fact sounding.

That evening, Danny and I sat in near-silence in our favourite place to hang out, the white stone-laden beach right by Snoqaulmie River. It was frosty still, I can remember it as clear as if it was yesterday.

“I can’t believe those fuckers,” I hissed, lighting a cigarette with cold, shakey fingers.

“Well, you’ll have your own bed, at least,” Danny said, frowning

“Don’t you look on the fuckin’ bright side! I don’t care if I have my own bed or not…” I sighed, dropped my face into my hands. “This sucks!”

“Yeah…”

The very next morning, Frank- Danny’s father- drove me into Seattle, into this brightly-lit office-looking place, where a short, fat, balding man in a brown suit that stunk of onions told me that these people was really nice and all, and I’d totally love it there. When I told him that he looked like he’d die alone, he chuckled, then glowered, and told me to keep it in my lane.

Less than an hour later, Frank dropped me off to at my brand-clean new home: an apartment on the tenth floor of a boring, brick building on some busy, busy, busy street, smack dang in the middle of Seattle.

A tall, dark-haired couple was standing, smiling stupidly, waiting for me. Their names were Richard and Nancy, of course, and they told me they were very excited to get to know me as soon as they met me. I shook their hands, smiling blandly: “Hi, I guess.”